"How should I know why?" she demanded. "You're the clever one. You figure it out."
"Are you all right?" I asked.
Her eyes widened scornfully. "Why, I'm fine," she said savagely. "I'm great, Mr. Corcoran, don't I look it? I'm marvelous. I've just been slapped all over my studio. I've been tossed on my bed and had most of my clothes ripped off by a gorilla who didn't really care any more about my body than if I'd been a store-window dummy. He just.. just violated me because it was the lousiest thing he could think of to do to me short of killing me. He said this would let you know he meant business and couldn't be stopped. He said when the time came he'd act and to hell with you. He said if you had any objections he wouldn't be hard to find. He said this would tell you the kind of man you had to deal with."
"Karl Kroch," I said.
"That's the name," she said. "A real crazy goon. And he can come back any time and go through the same routine all over again, and I'll just be happy because he isn't you! Why… why I really liked you. And you set me up for that!" She drew a harsh breath. "Now, if you've had your eyeful, get out of here! P-please get out of here!" Her voice faltered on the last sentence.
I asked, "Do you want a doctor?"
She shook her head. "No. He'd just ask a lot of dumb questions. I… I'm all right. I told you before I wasn't a sheltered virgin. I've had it rough before. Maybe not this rough, but rough. I'm all right. Just go away, will you?" She was silent for a moment. "Paul."
"Yes?"
"You might at least have warned me! You might have let me know what you were getting me into. You might have told me the kind of people… He had a face like Mount Rushmore before they carved presidents on it. It never changed. He didn't get any bang out of mussing me up or even… even taking me. It was like he was a machine just programmed to… Is that the way you are, Paul? Inside? Behind that humorously satanic look that makes a girl feel she's found somebody, well, dangerous but nice. Just another machine with a different face? One machine labeled Kroch. One machine labeled Corcoran. Playing some kind of lousy, mysterious game. And a naive little softhearted sentimental kook named Vail, caught in the middle!"
I said, "If there's anything I can do-"
"I told you. You can get out of here!"
"Sure." After a moment, I started to turn away.
"You don't have to worry," she said behind me. "It's still deal. It's a lousy, rotten deal but I agreed to it and I'll stick to it. I won't call the police and interfere with your crummy business, whatever it is. I won't talk." Her voice was hard. "But on second thought, there is something you can do. You can pay for the damage. My wardrobe is kind of limited. I've got plenty of jeans with paint on them, but I don't have so many dresses I can afford to have them torn up."
I took out my wallet and went back to her and put some bills on the bed beside her, all I had with me except the small stuff. She picked them up and counted them and looked up quickly.
"And just what do you think you're paying for, Mr. Corcoran, an easy conscience?" she demanded scornfully. "You've been around, you know perfectly well this cheesy little satin number didn't cost any two hundred dollars. It was thirty-nine fifty on sale last year. Ten bucks will cover the rest. The bruises will heal, and I don't put a price on my self-respect or whatever you want to call that. Here!"
She held out three of the four fifties I'd given her. There was nothing to do but take them. I looked down on her small, hurt, hating face for a moment. I tried to reassure myself with the thought that the fate of nations and the lives of important people were at stake, and that what happened to one little girl wasn't really important, but I didn't try to sell the idea to her, perhaps because I wasn't sure I bought it myself.
I turned and walked to the door. A faint sound made me look back. She was again lying face down on the bed. Maybe she was crying. I couldn't be sure. The one thing I could be sure of was that I wasn't the man to console her. I paused by the door to slip the three fifties under her gloves before I went out. After all, by the looks of the place, she'd had a lot of stuff ruined in here besides a dress.
Maybe I was trying to buy an easy conscience, as she'd charged. At a hundred and fifty bucks it would have been a bargain if it had worked, but it didn't.
VII
BUT IT WAS NO time for sentimental luxuries like consciences. They're not supposed to be part of our equipment, anyway. I got back to my hotel room as quickly as possible and called Washington by way of Denver, Colorado, since that's where I was supposed to be from and communications had been set up accordingly. I was put through to Mac right away.
"Emergency, sir," I said. "How fast can you make contact with our lady genius? I'd rather not call her directly if I can help it, at this point in the proceedings."
"It shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes," Mac said. "What is the message?"
"Tell her to make sure her door is locked. There's a wild man loose. I have some other instructions I want you to forward, but they can wait while you get the electrons moving."
"Very well. Hold on."
Waiting, I happened to glance across the room. It was a mistake. The mirror above the dresser caught my eye. The guy who looked back at me wasn't a nice guy. There wasn't anything humorously satanic about him, either. He just looked plain mean.
"They are setting it up." Mac's voice was back in the phone, crisp and businesslike. "You'd better bring me up to date while we wait."
"Yes, sir," I said. "We goofed the contact earlier in the evening. The Mariassy is no Lady Barrymore, to say the least. She gave the show away, or something did, although I broke up the performance when I saw we weren't putting it over. Now, if she's followed orders, she's in her room waiting to hear from me, according to the emergency routine we set up. The further instructions I want you to pass along are that she's to go down to the bar in exactly half an hour-that'll give me time to look around a bit and get into position to cover her. She's to enter the lounge looking moody and disconsolate as if her New Orleans vacation wasn't panning out too well. I'll come in shortly. I'll walk up and offer to buy her a drink by way of apologizing for my past rudeness. Presently more liquor will flow. She will absorb her share, at first, with dignified restraint and reluctance, later more willingly to the point of vanishing inhibitions. Seduction will follow. At least it will seem to follow, to anyone watching. How's that call coming? I'd like to be sure she has sense enough to keep her door shut like she was told."
"They'll ring when they're ready." Mac was silent for a moment. I sensed his disapproval. "Isn't this a little obvious, Eric? Besides not being quite in line with the agreement we made with the lady and her department? We promised to preserve her reputation, remember?"
"Also her life," I said. "Things have happened, sir, and I'd like to be in a position to keep a better eye on her. Assure her that her virtue will remain intact and that her reputation will be restored by the matrimony route very shortly. We just haven't got time to make the preliminary sparring look as refined and proper as we'd planned, and it may not matter anyway. Please switch on the recorder."
I heard a click. He said, "Recording. Go ahead, Eric."
"Male, forty-five give or take five. Those rocky faces are hard to judge," I said. "Say a hair under six feet. Say two-twenty give or take five. A lot of shoulder. Some paunch. Pretty much a skinhead. What hair there is, is kind of grizzled. I never got close enough to make the eye color. Nose big, bony, has been broken. Ears protruding, a regular jughead. The name he gives out is Karl, Karl Kroch. They shouldn't have any trouble running him down. Everything about him says pro. End of description."
"Hold on again… All right, he's being checked."
"What about the Mariassy?"
"They're having a little trouble with the circuits."
"Well, I'll give them another couple of minutes, and then I'd better warn her direct and to hell with our cover. This Kroch has worked over one female tonight; I don't want to give him a crack at another."
"Tell me wh
at's happened," Mac said, and I told him. When I was finished, he was silent for a moment. I could visualize him frowning. He said at last, "That isn't good. Obviously your cover is thoroughly blown already, at least as far as this Kroch is concerned, and he would seem to be the audience you were playing for. What about the Vail girl? Could she be implicated?"
"It's hard to see how, sir," I said. "She could hardly be a plant. I picked her at random out of a whole bar full of people."
"Well, she's obviously involved now. And even if she's completely innocent, she can make trouble for us if she decides to go to the authorities. It's always embarrassing having to clear up these things through official channels, and any publicity right now would be a serious handicap to the whole operation."
I said, "She won't go near the police."
"So she told you. But women have been known to change their minds, waking up in the morning bruised and disfigured, wondering how they can explain their humiliating appearance to friends and neighbors."
I said, "She won't talk, sir. I'll bet money on it. But if you want to put a local man to watching her, okay. He can at least see that nobody bothers her again."
Mac hesitated. "You seem to have been impressed by this young girl, Eric."
I glanced at the mean-looking hombre in the mirror. I said, "Hell, I threw her to Kroch deliberately, as it turned out. I just feel kind of responsible for her now. She's a good kid."
"Good or bad, a little surveillance won't harm her. And it may give us advance warning in case she doesn't live up to your high expectations. Now what about the man?"
I glanced at my watch. Not as much time had passed as I'd thought. I told myself the Mariassy was safe enough if she followed instructions. Unlike Toni Vail, she knew she was involved in a dangerous game. If she stuck her neck out contrary to orders, it was her own damn fault.
"Karl Kroch?" I said. "I only saw him once. As I told you, sir, he's got the earmarks of a pro. And he does a real smooth job of tailing for such a big man: you'd never know he was there. But he talks too much. All that stuff he told Toni, including his name, for God's sake! And his warning to me that he's going to act when the time comes and to hell with me. That's schoolboy stuff. Either he's a screwball with delusions of grandeur who really thinks he can scare me off by roughing up girls, or he's deliberately putting out a lot of phony bluster and playing a real cagey game underneath. But if so, what is it?"
Mac said, "It's possible he's being clever, of course. However, you know how those big hard men sometimes get after years of success in the business. They start thinking the rules are not for them-they don't have to be careful like lesser agents; then can run right over any opposition. They are superhuman and practically invisible, they think. Shortly thereafter they are either killed or put away quietly to dream their Napoleonic dreams in locked and padded rooms. Mr. Kroch seems to be displaying most of the symptoms."
"Maybe," I said, unconvinced. "But I never like to act on the assumption that a man is crazy until I actually see him foaming at the mouth, sir."
"He seems to have worked up a pretty good lather tonight," Mac said, "judging by the Vail girl's report. And we can be glad of it. His behavior gives us a chance of retrieving what might have been a complete disaster. Under ordinary circumstances, once he spotted you, a man in Kroch's position would simply have disappeared and notified his superiors to send in an unknown replacement. As it is, overconfident, he apparently intends to stay right on the job covering Dr. Mariassy in spite of you. He has even served notice that if he gets the signal to act he will execute it right under your nose. As a result of this bravado, he is still available to you if you act quickly, before he has time to reconsider."
"Yes, sir," I said. "That's another reason I decided to speed up the romance timetable."
Mac was silent for a moment. "Since Kroch already has you spotted, there would seem to be hardly any reason left for the amateur theatrics."
"We've got to be doing something plausible while we're getting him out of town to where we can take him," I said. "I don't know New Orleans well enough to pull anything here; I'd probably wind up behind bars. And Kroch is acting very funny and kind of obvious, as if he were really trying to draw attention to himself. What if there's somebody else to do the dirty work, and big, blustering, loudmouthed Kroch is just a decoy?"
"In that case, the other agent will have been warned about you by Kroch. Your performance with Dr. Mariassy will not deceive him, either. And we are not interested in identifying every possible agent involved. All we want is one man who will talk. One man who will lead us to Taussig."
I said, "God knows I'm not yearning to get drunk and disorderly with our tweedy intellectual, sir, let alone marry her, even in name only. But until I know exactly what's going on, I'd rather stick to the original plan with minor modifications. It may still fool somebody, who knows?"
"Well, maybe you're right," Mac conceded. "On second thought, it's never wise to drop a cover hastily, particularly when the opposition is acting in a peculiar manner. Very well, I-" He stopped. I heard a phone ringing in the upstairs office some fifteen hundred miles to the north and east of where I sat. "Just a minute. This is probably the call we're waiting for."
I sat on the bed and looked at the wall and thought about a small, hurt, disheveled girl lying face down on a rumpled bed in a wrecked room. Then I thought of a burning car and a shape under a blanket and a single silver slipper. I heard Mac pick up the phone. When he spoke, his voice held a note of urgency.
"Eric."
"Yes, sir."
"We cannot reach Dr. Mariassy. She has ostensibly retired and left orders at the hotel desk to the effect that she is not to be disturbed. Without causing comment, it wasn't possible to determine by phone whether the voice that gave the orders was male or female."
"Oh, Jesus!" I said. "I knew I should have gone straight to her. Well, to hell with the meet-cute act, I'm on my way."
VIII
OLIVIA MARIASSY had a room on the third floor, two below mine. I used the stairs. Nobody seemed interested in where I was going. Nobody seemed to be hanging around the corridor in front of number 310, either. I had the feeling I was in the clear, but I didn't take time to make sure. I just went right up to the door and knocked.
A feminine voice responded promptly. "Who is it?"
I drew a long breath. I guess I'd been really worried. After a moment of relief, I started to get angry. Our tame scientist was still alive and, from the calm sound of her voice, unharmed, but apparently she expected me to shout my name and business through the panels; and what the hell was the idea of having the desk refuse to call her, anyway?
"The password is flattop," I said softly, "like in aircraft carrier."
''Oh.''
There was a little pause; then the door opened. She was still fully dressed in her tweed suit. Her only concession to the lateness of the hour was that she'd unbuttoned her jacket. She was fastening it up again primly as she stood there. She even had her shoes on, although I would have been willing to bet she hadn't had them on a minute earlier. No woman, no matter how intellectual and proper, sits and reads late at night in high heels.
That's what she'd been doing when I knocked: reading. A light burned over the big chair in the corner, and she was holding a fat book with her forefinger marking the place. The title, I noted, was The Algebra of Infinity, whatever that might mean.
Standing there facing me she looked, I thought, like a not unhandsome spinster librarian about to ask me sternly why I couldn't get into the habit of returning my books on time.
"What are you doing here?" was what she really asked. "I mean, is this wise, Mr. Corcoran? After all, we're not supposed to be acquainted yet, are we? That abortive incident in the bar hardly constituted an adequate introduction."
"Are you all right?" I asked, watching her face. "Are you alone in there?"
She looked startled first and then indignant. "Alone? Of course I'm alone! What do you mean?"
&nb
sp; I relaxed. It was obvious from her behavior that nobody was holding a gun on her from a hidden corner and telling her what to say. I pushed past her. The room was empty. So were the closet and bathroom. I came back to face her and reached out to shove the hail door closed.
"Now," I said, "what's the big idea, Doc?"
"I don't understand."
"I mean the phone bit. We tried to reach you. No go. Somebody had told the desk you didn't want to be disturbed. Naturally, knowing that under the circumstances
– particularly after the bar scene-you'd be much too smart to cut yourself off from us, in fact you'd be waiting for me to call, we got just a little concerned."
Her hand went to her mouth, ingenue fashion. It was an oddly girlish gesture for a woman with her severe appearance. "Why, I never thought! I guess I'm not a very good secret agent, Mr. Corcoran. I'm terribly sorry. I just well, it was a personal matter. Somebody with whom I didn't want to speak."
"Personal," I said. "This is a hell of a time for personal matters, Doc."
"People with medical degrees rarely like to be called Doc, Mr. Corcoran." She was her stiff, precise self once more. "And you are hardly in a position to criticize, after the way you left our business unfinished this evening to chase after that child in pink-leaving me, I must porn out, in a very humiliating position. I remember your saying on the ship that you ran after women, but I didn't realize it was compulsive!"
I stared at her. "You don't think I went off with the kid for fun, for God's sake!"
"What else could I think?" Her voice was cold. "An I must say I'm disappointed in your taste, Mr. Corcoran That shiny little dress, so tight, so short, so bare. Why do the little tarts all feel it's charming to overflow their clothes like that, all arms and legs and naked shoulders?'
I said, "Never mind my taste, or hers. That little tart as you call her, has just been beat up and raped because of us. You might keep it in mind while you criticize her clothes. You might also keep it in mind the next time your feel like shutting off your phone for personal reasons This isn't a friendly rubber of bridge, you know. Just what were your personal reasons?"
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